i loved the loma linda canned franks. no shame. for a brief, glorious time, the health-ish food store up the street sold them. then they marked them 50% off, and then they stopped carrying them, and now they're going out of business. and that is the south slope saga of loma linda.

_________________"rise from the ashes of douchebaggery like a fancy vegan phoenix" - amandabear"I'm pretty sure the moral of this story is: fork pants." - cq

yeah! balance life or something? between 17th and 18th, right between eagle and has beans. aw, i wish we'd had this talk while you were here! we could have thrown uncomfortable canned frank parties for all our friends.

_________________"rise from the ashes of douchebaggery like a fancy vegan phoenix" - amandabear"I'm pretty sure the moral of this story is: fork pants." - cq

I have mixed feelings on this. Clearly, they didn't get the message that most of these aren't meant to be eaten cold, straight out of the package. BUT, for new vegans, who are probably relying on this stuff to transition over and want something that replaces the culinary role of cheese, that's probably common; I think it's a valid question to ask how many people raw tofutti slices or a block of FYH or the unconvincing taste of cheddar Daiya are turning off of veganism. I've had people bring, say, Teese to a pizza making party to include vegans - well intentioned but it needs a little bit of loving to not end up as dry shreds of toenailesque "cheese".. so you have to kind of intervene in that situation to protect the good name of veganism, otherwise the omnis are all "what the fizzle r this shiitake?"

I also think it's counterproductive to keep insisting to people who don't like these products that no, they're wrong and the commercial vegan cheeses are actually awesome. The only conclusion people are going to reach is that man, vegans have shiitake taste. They aren't all that awesome in all potential applications, and they take a little experience/coaxing to get the best out of them. I actually consider it a pretty huge marketing failure on the part of these brands that they give you so little info on how to make something decent with them.

Clearly, they didn't get the message that most of these aren't meant to be eaten cold, straight out of the package. BUT, for new vegans, who are probably relying on this stuff to transition over and want something that replaces the culinary role of cheese, that's probably common; I think it's a valid question to ask how many people raw tofutti slices or a block of FYH or the unconvincing taste of cheddar Daiya are turning off of veganism. I've had people bring, say, Teese to a pizza making party to include vegans - well intentioned but it needs a little bit of loving to not end up as dry shreds of toenailesque "cheese".. so you have to kind of intervene in that situation to protect the good name of veganism, otherwise the omnis are all "what the fizzle r this shiitake?"

I also think it's counterproductive to keep insisting to people who don't like these products that no, they're wrong and the commercial vegan cheeses are actually awesome. The only conclusion people are going to reach is that man, vegans have shiitake taste. They aren't all that awesome in all potential applications, and they take a little experience/coaxing to get the best out of them. I actually consider it a pretty huge marketing failure on the part of these brands that they give you so little info on how to make something decent with them.

I agree with this. In my experience, Cheezly (especially the blue one) and the Tree Hill cheeses are about the only ones I would eat straight on a cracker, but most of the others can be put to good use by melting, mixing with other ingredients, etc. They just need to make that clearer, rather than suggest you can just replace dairy cheeses with vegan analogues in recipes and expect them to taste and behave the same way.

The "eating vegan cheese cold from the fridge" thing reminds me of the first time I tried tempeh when I was about 16. I'd recently gone vegetarian and had never really done much cooking beyond grilled cheese sandwiches and scrambled eggs, but I was excited to try new stuff. I read about tempeh somewhere (probably Diet for a Small Planet or Laurel's Kitchen or similar), bought some at the local HF store, and then just sliced it and put it in a sandwich ice cold. It was...undelicious, and there were fewer recipes for good ways to prepare it (especially compared to tofu) floating around back then, so it was years before I really learned to like tempeh. Now I cook it all the time, and my kids have always liked it because I know what to do with it!

I liked how they had this whole paragraph in the beginning about not comparing vegan foods to the 'real thing' and letting them exist in their own right, and then a bunch of the comments were basically 'this is not cheese'. Nope, it's not. In fact, I think it takes a really long time to un-remember what cheese tastes like, thus making it hard to objectively review vegan cheeses. I hated all vegan cheese for a long time after I stopped eating dairy, but now I like some of them. Also, they just tried a bunch of cheeses from like 3 different brands - how about a real taste test with an actual variety of brands instead?

And yeah, not just eating them cold out of the package.

_________________But if one were to tickle Pluto, I suspect that it might very quietly laugh. - pandacookie

55k usd is like 4 cad or whatever equivalent in beavers you use on the island - joshua

yeah! balance life or something? between 17th and 18th, right between eagle and has beans. aw, i wish we'd had this talk while you were here! we could have thrown uncomfortable canned frank parties for all our friends.

I wanted to recreate a 70s wiener jello mold but even at 50% off that shiitake was too expensive for something no one would eat.

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 6025Location: United States of New England

i also prefer the daiya block and slices to the shreds. the slices i will put cold/unmelted on a sandwich. yum!

the cheddar block i will make nachoes out of. also yum! it's sort of like velveeta but has that daiya graininess and a faint daiya taste to it. i agree it's not as good as the "real" (im using the word real loosely here in reference to velveeta) stuff but if you dont want to eat the real stuff i think it's a great sub.

ive never had some of the brands people seem to really like like sheese or cheezly

i dont know if it's because at 27 my body decided to be lactose intolerant but im kind of fine just not having much "cheese" in my diet.

i do miss pizza though. i personally have yet to have a good substitute for a "regular" cheese pizza.

To be honest, I've tried some awful, awful vegan cheese substitutes and even some of the better ones have to be prepared in a certain way to make them edible.

Having said that though, I now have a huge craving for vegusto piquant cheese, which I can happily eat with crackers or in a sandwich or straight out of the pack. Also violife is so fracking delicious I have to seriously restrain myself from eating it all in one go straight out of the pack whenever I get it... So I'd say these taste testers need to try some better products.

I want consumer reports to have a vegan panel taste a crap-ton of vegan cheeses. Because even though everyone has different tastes, I'm sure daiya would get a pretty good average score. and then they could have the little chart on the side to rank taste when cold, taste when hot, meltiness, etc

Meh! I agree that it's tough for non-vegans or new vegans to forget the taste of cheese. My husband is the same--I bought three things of Dr. Cow for our wine tasting adventure in Napa (so basically I spent about a million dollars), and he hated it! He's a vegetarian. I think it is absolutely forking delicious. I used to really like a sharp cheese, but when I accidentally ate a bit in a restaurant dish recently my tastebuds were all WHAT THE WHAT GROSS and not just because I realized it wasn't vegan.

But it's kind of a dumb taste test because the vegetarian equivalent would be like comparing a 10-year aged cheddar with Kraft singles and where the heck do you even begin with that?

When is someone going to send me some Treeline? I tasted a slice of Daiya Swiss the other day against my better judgment and it tasted like a rancid piece of ten year old Costco cheesecake.

Sorry but I'm going to be a dissenter here: if you like vegan cheese, then you've forgotten what real cheese tastes like.

ok. but so what? i don't think anyone here is saying vegan cheese tastes like dairy cheese. in fact, people have agreed that it doesn't. it's just dumb to write an "article" about a vegan cheese taste test when you don't even know the the proper applications for vegan cheeses and to compare them to dairy cheese.

also, what's the point of just straight up being a hater? i just want to comment with this in the comments:

_________________I am not a troll. I am TELLING YOU THE ******GOD'S TRUTH****** AND YOU JUST DON'T WANT THE HEAR IT DO YOU?

They should have included some of the newer vegan cheeses meant to stand on their own--Door 86, Kite Hill, and even FFL queso come to mind. They should have done a little research and bought the brands people speak highly of. Also, why would you eat veggie singles plain? That's just dumb.

I used to, and know lots of people still do, just roll dairy singles and eat them plain (rolled around a gherkin - delish!).

The only vegan slices I can get are Tofutti and they have a sour, vinegary taste. No way I could ever eat them again.

Right, people do that with dairy cheese, but if the author knew anything about vegan cheese, she would know that's not really how vegan cheese is meant to be eaten. The same way you can't compare seitan or tofu to beef, you can't compare vegan cheese to dairy cheese. if you're looking for something that exactly mimics non vegan products, you're never going to be satisfied. that's why this cheese review didn't work.

I'm no great defender of vegan cheese. There are quite a few I don't like, but I just wouldn't publicly say they suck because lots of people do like them and because I know pretty much all of them are edible in certain applications. This reviewer didn't do any research and clearly had no experience with vegan cheese. It would have been much better if she had gone to a restaurant to try them or found recipes online or something. Or you know, she could have at least been diplomatic about it and said "hey, this was gross plain, but maybe it'd be good melted on a sandwich" or something.

_________________I am not a troll. I am TELLING YOU THE ******GOD'S TRUTH****** AND YOU JUST DON'T WANT THE HEAR IT DO YOU?

Oh yeah, I totally used to eat kraft singles plain! I don't think many people would recommend eating veggies singles though. If the reviewer had even done a little googling, it would be pretty easy to figure that out.